The Arms Room

The first I-frame revolvers were technically the Model of 1896, with its combination ejector rod/cylinder release and topstrap-mounted cylin...

The full-size Model No.3 was Smith & Wesson's first top-break revolver, as distinguished from the tip-up rimfire guns on which the c...

Smith & Wesson's small "I-frame" revolvers had their genesis in the first swing-out cylinder revolver the manufacturer off...

When Smith & Wesson got back into the centerfire autoloader game about a decade after WWII, they only offered the pistol in one chamberi...

 Just titling this post was difficult. You'll see this gun referred to by a bunch of different names, with "Shorty Forty" or ...

The history of the 10mm Auto cartridge is well-documented elsewhere (and has been lightly touched on here ) but basically it was the culmin...

By the early 1990s, Smith & Wesson's dominance of the law enforcement market was starting to erode. While the Third Generation au...

As was mentioned the last time we looked at a .38 Safety Hammerless on this blog ('way back in Sunday Smith #2 ), the commonly repeat...

The Smith & Wesson 4046 represents two trends that reached their peak in the mid 1990s. The first is the .40S&W cartridge itself....

As the 1860s drew to a close, America was at the gateway to a new era. The nation had survived a terrible civil war, westward expansion w...

When Smith & Wesson introduced the first double-stack DA/SA pistol to the market in the early 1970s, in the form of the Model 59, it ...

Certain models of Smith & Wesson have bits of apocryphal lore that become permanently entwined with them. You can't see a top-bre...

The compact large-bore revolver has had a devoted following in the United States ever since the first Webley "British Bulldogs"...

After the failure of their first semiautomatic pistol design , Smith & Wesson wouldn't return to the autoloader business for almo...

By the time the Third Generation Smith autopistols hit the market in the early Nineties, pistols like the Glock and Ruger's P-89 were...

Since the discontinuation of the ill-fated Model 61 Escort in '73 and well into the '80s, Smith & Wesson didn't have any ...

With their Second Generation auto lineup in the mid-Eighties, Smith & Wesson offered a .45ACP pistol that was more or less aimed right...

After the market failure of their first attempt at a centerfire autoloader in the mid-1930s, Smith & Wesson abandoned that market nic...

Last Friday I took a couple of .25 ACP pocket pistols along to the range, just to see what shooting them would be like alongside the newes...

Then & Now